Atheism : a guide for the perplexed

204 Pages·2010·0.72 MB·English

by  Kerry S

ATHEISM:
A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
This page intentionally left blank
ATHEISM:
A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
KERRY WALTERS
The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc
80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038
The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
www.continuumbooks.com
Copyright © 2010 by Kerry Walters
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the permission of the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-8264-4326-7 (hardcover)
ISBN: 978-0-8264-2493-8 (paperback)
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed in the United States of America
For Fred Mahan
A lifelong seeker of truth
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Introduction What This Book Isn’t and What It Is 1
Chapter 1 What Is Atheism? 9
Chapter 2 The Atheist Worldview 32
Chapter 3 Refuting Theistic “Proofs” 53
Chapter 4 Why God Can’t Exist 74
Chapter 5 The Natural History of Religion 95
Chapter 6 A Godless Morality 117
Chapter 7 Sisyphus’ Question 138
Chapter 8 An Atheist Spirituality? 157
Works Cited 178
Index 189
vii
This page intentionally left blank
INTRODUCTION
WHAT THIS BOOK ISN’T AND WHAT IT IS
After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in
a cave—a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the
way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which
his shadow will be shown.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
A deluded patient runs into a doctor’s office. “Doc!” he shouts,
panic-stricken. “I think I’m dead!” The doctor tries to persuade him
that he’s in fact very much alive, but the patient won’t listen. Finally
the exasperated doctor says, “Look, dead guys don’t bleed, right?”
“Right,” agrees the patient. “Okay then,” replies the doctor. “Let’s
just see if you bleed.” He takes a needle and jabs it into the patient’s
thumb. The patient stares at the blood beading up and shakes his head
in disbelief. “Holy cow!” he says. “I was wrong. Dead men do bleed!”
In the eyes of many, disputants in the seemingly endless debate
about God’s existence frequently come across like the patient in this
joke. Intractably set in their beliefs, atheists and theists too often
seem more intent on scoring forensic points at one another’s expense
than carefully following where the evidence leads them. Each side
appears so utterly convinced of the correctness of its own position
and the absurdity of the other that it’s difficult to see what, if any-
thing, either would allow as legitimate counterarguments. Like the
patient too convinced he’s dead to see evidence to the contrary, many
of the loudest voices in the debate about God refuse to accept the
possibility that anyone who disagrees with them deserves to be taken
seriously in even the slightest way.
The already acrimonious debate has morphed into a cultural
slugfest in recent years with the rise of religious fundamentalism
1